Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivered one of his harshest criticisms of the new US shift in adopting Saudi Arabia’s anti-Iranian stance.
In a speech commemorating the death of the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Khamenei said that a number of enemy countries emerged immediately in the first decade following Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979 and have remained enemies until today. He urged Iranian officials to not ignore the principle of separating from the “coil of American power.” Khamenei added, “Our enemies are not idle. Until today, they have not been able to knock us back, but the enemy is lurking.”